Fossil Coral (fine quality)

Item Description

Indonesia has been the source of some of the finest, and most well-preserved Coral fossil stones in the world. It's my understanding that the coral reefs along these highly volcanic islands were preserved when they were covered by volcanic sediments from eruptions long ago. The island of Sumatra has incredible deposits of rare and ornate suite of fossils from approximately 20 million years ago during the Miocene Age. These processes amazingly captured the full pattern and character of the original coral life forms have been preserved in great detail. Here we have a wonderful "Round Cabochon" cut stone of this beautiful material with beige and red cream colored hues in reflected light, but this piece is better than most because it's GEMMY inside, showing a richer yellow/orange hue when backlit. VERY few of these stones have this kind of internal translucency, and this is certainly one of the best we've had to offer. In addition to the gemminess, this superb stone shows the amazingly well-preserved patterns of the beautiful Coral (I'm told it's actually Sponge Coral) throughout.